News about ConPolicy

On September 27 the CSR Leaders’ Circle “Corporate Digital Responsibility” took place which was organized and implemented by Systain and ConPolicy.

In a mix of practical presentations and interactive workshop-elements over 50 participants from business corporations and politics discussed society’s expectations towards digitalized companies, opportunities and challenges of Corporate Digital Responsibility and practical experiences.

The workshop made clear how important the discussion of Corporate Digital Responsibility is and how much still needs to be done to think digitalization, sustainability and corporate responsibility complementary and act accordingly.

Consumer protection as a competitive advantage? ConPolicy discusses benefits of responsible corporate conduct at the ING-DiBa Orange Morning Club

In the past few years many legislative activities in the financial services sector were targeted to stimulate competition as well as consumer protection. Yet, it is to ask whether businesses should address consumer protection questions mainly from a compliance perspective or whether consumer protection might also be related to a competitive advantage.

This question was discussed today at the ING-DiBa Orange Morning Club in Berlin. After keynotes by ConPolicy-Director Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun and the Consumer Protection Officer of ING-DiBA Thomas Bieler, both discussed possibilities by which businesses could differentiate themselves from competitors by taking consumer protection beyond legal compliance seriously and what is needed to ensure that such activities are not only conceived as PR activities.

09/24/2018

Corporate Digital Responsibility ConPolicy engages in the debate at the Retail Forum 4.0 in Berlin

Job losses caused by artificial intelligence, arbitrariness by algorithms and severe IT-security weaknesses in toys are just some examples of the issues that are currently publicly discussed in the context of digitalization. Against this background the German Retail Association (HDE) invited to the Retail Forum 4.0. Here the question was discussed, to what extent companies have a social responsibility in the digital economy.

Case studies at a conference in Hagen ConPolicy talk on understanding addressees in consumer policy

On September 18th, stakeholders from academia, consumer associations, lobby associations and politics discussed the relation between the instruments used and the understanding of addressees in consumer policy interventions. They debated which image of consumers currently exists and how this image relates to the instruments chosen in consumer policy.

The conference was organized by Dr. Kathrin Loer, who leads a research project on this topic at FernUniversität in Hagen.

In this context, ConPolicy project manager Dr. Max Vetterpresented two case studies. Based on data collected by ConPolicy, he firstly showed why consumers often find the present German rental control regulation difficult to use (you can find a factsheet on this topic here).

In a second case study, he addressed the changing image of consumers in the field of consumer advice and consumer information, resulting in district-based approaches. Here, ConPolicy can draw from insights gained over the two-year consulting and evaluation of the district-based approach in Cologne (you can find the evaluation report here).

In the afternoon, the conference was rounded off by a panel discussion of policy suggestions as well as obstacles for implementation.

How can we manage to consume more sustainably? Why is it that we know so much about sustainability, but do not act sustainably? These were the questions asked by the youth magazine bento from Spiegel Online. Dr. Viola Muster, project manager at ConPolicy, answered these questions. During the interview, it became clear, on the one hand, that we have to change the framework conditions, e.g. prices and the availability of sustainable products. On the other hand, it became obvious that this requires the contribution of each and every individual, as a citizen and as a consumer.

Future of consumer policy and research Journal of Consumer Policy celebrates its 40th anniversary in the context of an international conference

The Journal of Consumer Policy is the scientific journal for researchers, that are working on consumer policy issues. Against the backdrop of its 40th anniversary the editors of the journal, inter alia Prof. Dr. Hans Micklitz and Prof. Dr. Lucia Reisch, organized an international conference. For two days researchers as well as representatives of international organizations (such as the United Nations) and of non-governmental organizations (such as BEUC) came together at the European University Institute in Florence. Here a wide range of questions were discussed that are of great relevance for the future of consumer policy and research. Among them were aspects such as:

To what extent can it be useful to harmonize consumer law internationally?

Would it be useful and necessary to give up the “one-size-fits-all” approach to consumer protection regulation and to differentiate between different consumer groups?

ConPolicy-Director Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun showed in his presentation that digital technologies such as artificial intelligence or blockchain-technology could and should be used to achieve consumer policy goals. He called for more systematic research about this topic and founding.

09/11/2018

Quadriga-ConPolicy research project featured in the Handelsblatt Privacy Bot "DATENSCHUTZscanner" unburdens users by reading and assessing privacy policy for them

Today the results of the “DATENSCHUTZscanner” (German: privacy scanner) were published in the Handelsblatt. The DATENSCHUTZscanner is a so called “privacy bot” that reads and interprets complicated and lengthy privacy policies on behalf of consumers. Thereby it increases transparency and control with respect to privacy issues. Technically the DATENSCHUTZscanner uses an automatic text-analysis-process (natural language processing) and allows to asses a large number of privacy policies in a short amount of time. The results are evaluated with respect to 30 distinct privacy practices. For using the DATENSCHUTZscanner consumers are not expected to hold any specific technical or legal knowledge.

ConPolicy-director Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun and project manager Dr. Sara Elisa Kettner were involved in the project on behalf of Quadriga University of Applied Sciences. The project was funded from 2016 until 2018 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with approx. 2 Mio. Euros. Project partners were Self-Regulation Information Economy (Selbstregulierung Informationswirtschaft e.V.), Institute for Applied Informatics (Institut für Angewandte Informatik) and mediaTest digital.

ConPolicy project manager Dr. Julius Rauber gave an expert lecture and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the nudge approach with participants from various scientific disciplines. Finally, a panel discussion discussed similarities and differences between real laboratories, citizen participation and nudging from a philosophical, psychological and sociological point of view.